


Without Hope, Ambition

by NervousAsexual



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Drowning, Thieves Guild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 06:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18733534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: To steal from a god was simple enough. To steal from Maven Black-Briar--Mercer Frey should have known better.





	Without Hope, Ambition

There were things you didn't do to Maven Black-Briar. Lines you didn't cross.

That was part of the problem. There were a lot of lines that had to be walked, and they boxed you in.

At first Mercer Frey was more intrigued than annoyed. Any great artist knew that limits were what inspired creativity. For a time it was quite amusing to slip around the rules, exploiting every little loophole and idle remark.

Then Maven had Maul break his face.

He had nearly lost control of the guild then and there. Had to slink into the Ragged Flagon, was forced into seeking help from Galathil. That bitch had laughed in his face when he told her to keep this quiet. No one spoke openly against him, but it was clear what they were all thinking--that Gallus would never have bent to Black-Briar's whims like that.

What he wanted to shout at them (what he would have shouted at them had his jaw not been wired shut) was that Gallus had had the luck of Nocturnal on his side. Everything Mercer had to his name had been clawed out of the stone of the rift with his bare hands.

He played by her rules after that. No sense wasting what little luck he had left throwing himself against an immovable object. He gave Maven her due--for the most part.

Before he was done drinking broth from a bowl he skimmed the first coin from the guild's coffers and quietly invested in the East Empire Trading Company.

Even with Galathil's... talents... there was a distinct click to his jaw after. Every time he opened his mouth and heard it he seethed inside. The Ragged Flagon was supposed to be a safe haven for thieves. Now that Maven had on her side someone who knew the place, could find his way through the Ratways with both eyes blind, it was nothing.

He diversified, split a few investments between businesses up in Solitude and in Windhelm.

Maven gave him the deed for Riftweald Manor as a "gift," like this was a game. Was he supposed to take comfort in the fact that she was just across the temple courtyard, watching and waiting for him to make another mistake?

He hadn't done a break-in on his own in a while--not since the night Maul came in through the cemetery entrance and broke his jaw--but he made one exception. He made a trip out to Falkreath under the guise of communication with the Dark Brotherhood. Rumor had it an old sword from Cyrodiil was locked up there, in the former jarl's house. Dengeir was a paranoid old bastard and the guard was always keeping an eye on his place, but Mercer Frey had stolen from a daedric prince. To infiltrate an old man's countryside home was child's play.

The sword he lifted was an old one. Chillrend apparently predated the Oblivion crisis, and it made a constant soft hissing noise. It was comforting in its own way.

The writing was on the wall, in so very many ways. The diamond and paired circles of the "protected" shadowmark spread across the city like a rash. He didn't ask--didn't need to ask--but suspected that Maven was making a small fortune in the protection racket. Meanwhile the thieves guild was foundering hard. The money wasn't coming in as it used to, fences in every capital city in Skyrim began turning straight, and the Flagon grew emptier and emptier and more and more run down. He still hadn't heard any subversive talk from the guild members, but he knew damn well Brynjolf wouldn't come to him with problems. He'd seen Mjoll poking around, sticking her nose into everyone's business, and even Brand-Shei seemed to be losing respect for the guild. Everything was falling to pieces in his hands.

He went over the books again and again, looking for places to cut corners. It was only a matter of time before Maven turned on him. He had to get out of Riften soon.

He made one last investment. One afternoon he slipped out through the Ratway, avoiding the miserable lowlifes prowling around there, and brought a handful of coins to Elgrim. The money changed hands, and he wrapped the little white vial Elgrim gave him in twine and hung it from his neck. If the worst came he would be ready.

It came.

Maul came in again, during the evening hours when Mercer was trying to rest in preparation for running. Earlier in the day he'd made arrangements for transport out with a caravan moving fish, and the timing couldn't have been a coincidence. Someone had sold him out to Maven.

He'd been asleep when Maul came, napping fitfully in the bed behind the passage to the cistern. When he woke to the icy burn of Chillrend against his throat he struggled, just a little, before he remembered that he couldn't afford to escalate this. He let Maul bind his hands at the wrist and his arms at the elbow.

"Come on," Maul told him, taking hold of the ropes. "Maven's waiting."

As dead as the Flagon had been before, he had never seen it so empty as when Maul dragged him out of that room. No Tonilia, no Delvin, no one but a familiar red-headed form in thieves guild armor drinking alone at the bar. Mercer had the sudden, almost irrepressible urge to scream at him. That bastard, acting as if he could run this guild any better.

But he did nothing, and Maul hustled him out to the docks.

Maven was waiting for them in the growing dark, looking out over Lake Honrich, and she was alone. He looked at her and felt hatred that made his skin burn. The potion of waterbreathing was sharply cool against his flesh where it hung beneath his shirt. She glanced at him idly, as if his presence bored her. "You have a lot of nerve, Frey."

He said nothing.

"The guild owes its continued existence to my family, and you--what? What exactly was your plan?"

His arms ached and chafed where they were tied. He looked out at the water too. He would have thought the water would have been thick with the bodies of Maven's enemies by now. He was tense at the idea of joining them.

"I had thought you were a devotee of the Grey Fox. But I suppose that's a thief for you, isn't it? You're only noble when it suits you. You'll steal from me or your guild, doesn't matter which."

With a few slow breaths he tried to calm down. He had a waterbreathing potion. There would be time to free himself and then he would get himself to Windhelm and catch the next ship out of Skyrim. This was an eventuality he had planned for.

Maven watched him quietly for a while, and he watched back.

"Are you going to beg?" she asked. Her voice was so soft it sent a shiver down his spine. "Most of your kind do."

He had no interest in humiliating himself for her amusement. There were few things Maven Black-Briar was not capable of, but he knew as well as anyone that mercy was one of those things. She circled him once, twice--he had to restrain himself from driving the top of his head directly into her face--let her feel a fraction of what her little crony had done to him--and she gave Maul an idle glance.

"Around his neck," she said.

"What?"

Suddenly the point of Chillrend was at his throat, pressing just hard enough to scratch his skin. He went tense again. He didn't dare so much as swallow.

Maul looked at him, almost bored, and then the sword dropped to his chest and clipped the leather strap that held closed the collar of his armor.

The air turned to ice in his lungs.

With the tip of the sword flipped back one side of his collar, exposing the twine-wrapped bottle hanging from his throat. No one said anything. They didn't need to--the little white bottle couldn't have been anything else.

His collarbones ached with tension. He wouldn't beg. He was not going to beg.

Without a word Maul turned the sword point from him and smashed the pommel into the bottled potion.

It knocked the breath out of him, almost knocked him down, and the glass shattered into his skin. He didn't beg. All he could do was stand, frozen, as the potion of waterbreathing ran down his chest.

Maven said absolutely nothing. She walked away. Wasn't even looking as Maul took his arms and forced him over the wall into the lake.

There wasn't time to draw a breath before he struck the surface. Water filled his nose and mouth and he choked and struggled, even as his struggling stole the air from his lungs. The broken bottle floated up from his armor and bobbed there in front of him. Empty, but his only chance.

There was nothing else he could do. He twisted forward in the water and took the broken glass into his mouth.

It cut him, of course it cut him, but he swallowed through the blood and the tiniest trace of potion made its way down his throat. He could feel the sudden warmth against the cold water--it was working--and he drew in the deepest breath he could. It was fine. It was fine. He'd bought himself a few more moments. He struggled to free his arms or at least push himself toward the surface, but the water was soaking through the leather of his armor and weighing him down. Just moving was a struggle.

His last thoughts as he fought were of the skeleton key still tucked in a hidden pocket. Karliah had warned him his luck would turn, but she knew nothing. Nocturnal cared nothing for him or the key or the guild. That she had abandoned Gallus, her most devoted follower, proved that much. She was content to sit back and watch mortals tear themselves apart.

 _Hope I was good entertainment,_ he thought bitterly, and he sank in the waters of Lake Honrich.

* * *

He vomited water and bile and blood onto the shore, and the priest turned him onto his back.

"Oh," she said, plainly disgusted. "Thieves guild. Leave him."

His lungs, his stomach, everything burned. He saw stars, tiny pinpoints lost in waves of color in the aurora, and the amulet that hung from the priest's neck, the down-turned horn. A vigilant of Stendarr. She turned away from him.

"Wait." Blood and something else foamed at his mouth as he begged, and spattered as his body was wracked with coughs. "Please." Broken thoughts flooded his head, the closest he could come to forming a plan. She was leaving. Vigilants always traveled in pairs. Stendarr's light, purifying ills. "Daedra."

That drew her attention. "What did you say?"

His breath wouldn't come anymore. The mess of blood and foam and water drained back down his throat. The weight of his water-logged armor crushed his chest. His hands struggled against the ropes.

She said something to her companion--he was drowning in his own blood and she didn't so much as look at him--and then she gave a scoff and her hands glowed softly with the light of Stendarr. The light washed over him, easing the tension, smoothing over the wounds. He swallowed a mouthful of blood and froth and nothing replaced it. He was ill to his stomach, cold, and exhausted--but he was alive.

"You spoke of daedra," the priest said. "Elaborate."

He was lost in the light of the stars, of lungs filled with air instead of water. For a moment he couldn't form a single thought.

The priest scowled. "Piece of filth. He knows nothing."

"So be it. We need to move."

She was leaving, and as he breathed he assessed the situation. He wasn't dead, but he was so tired he could barely move, his arms were still tied, and he had no way of defending himself. He had to be on the shore of Lake Honrich. There were frostbite spiders in the woods, predators, scavengers. If she--if they--left him here he was as good as dead. He pulled in a breath as deep as he could, even though it sent him into spasms of coughing, and said, "No. Daedra in Riften."

The priest who had healed him turned back, and he could see her companion now, a small-boned Dunmer who looked to the priest. "What sort of daedra?"

"Worship." His chest ached with the coughing but he had to speak. His mind was foggy but he had to spin this. "Worshiping Nocturnal. They had one of her artifacts. Found it in... Stole it."

"Hmm." The priest sounded unconvinced. "What artifact is..."

"Left side of the armor. Inner pocket." He would have brought it out himself if he hadn't still been tied. The priest fumbled with the armor, uselessly tugging at straps and fidgeting with buckles, but even if she had been the slightest bit competent the sodden the leather only complicated matters. Finally she drew her sword and cut the armor from him. The chill air that swept over him stole the breath from his lungs once again.

As he struggled to breathe she removed the skeleton key from its hidden pocket.

"Disgusting," she said. "But the vaults will hold it." Then, to him: "Where did you get this?"

He tilted his head, beckoning her in closer. He was shaking. She bent her head to him, and he whispered a name in her ear.

He whispered, "Black-Briar."

* * *

The vigilants took him as far as Shor's Stone--he was a thief, they said, and not welcome at the Hall of the Vigilant. They would handle this daedra-worshiper, this Black-Briar. He should consider himself fortunate his treachery had rendered him useful to the vigil and give up his thieving ways. Only then would Stendarr offer him forgiveness.

He could not have cared less about Stendarr's forgiveness. One of the miners, an orc half again his own size, loaned him dry clothes, and he slept in the dirt beside a campfire. In the morning he'd start making his way toward Windhelm.

He had no illusions. Maven was too well connected for the vigilant to so much as touch her. They would be nothing more than an annoyance. He would be lucky for this to buy him any time at all.

It hardly mattered. He thought he understood. What the nightingales called the luck of Nocturnal wasn't luck at all. Somewhere in the Evergloam she was watching for nothing more than her own amusement. That was the only possible reason he hadn't died in that lake. Something he had done had amused the prince, and she had set this course for him, watched as everything he built turned to ash, and intervened only at the last moment.

The skeleton key was what opened the way for Nocturnal's blessing, Karliah had told him before she disappeared into the night. Maybe so. But her head was so filled with stories of thieves with honor and the nightingale code that she forgot the simplest fact of all: they were thieves. Their most important tool was not luck, not a daedric artifact, but their ability to go unnoticed by everyone, and that included the Mother of Night. Somehow the nightingale had convinced him to forget as well. He would not make that mistake again.

* * *

When the sun finally rose the miners of Shor's Stone gathered around the fire, and they found no sign that anyone had been there. If it weren't for some missing clothes, the orc said to his housemate, he would have thought he dreamed the whole thing.

"What thing?" asked the nord.

"You know. That guy. What was his name?"

"There was a guy, was there? Is he the one who trashed your side of the house?"

"Code of Mauloch, would you shut up about that?"

"All I'm asking is that you clean up once in a while."

"I'd rather spend more time in the mine hauling up iron than doing woman's work keeping the house clean."

"Forget clean, I would settle for livable."

They argued exactly as they had done time and again, and in time any memory of the half-drowned man who'd slept at their campfire faded away into darkness.


End file.
